son of the eloquent Servius, and the son-in-law of P. Crassus, who was both an eminent Speaker, and a skilful Civilian. He was much commended by our fathers, who respected him for the sake of _his_: but he had the misfortune to be stopped in his career. For being tried by the Mamilian law, as a party concerned in the conspiracy to support Jugurtha, though he exerted all his abilities to defend himself, he was unhappily cast. His peroration, or, as it is often called, his epilogue, is still extant; and was so much in repute, when we were school-boys, that we used to learn it by heart: he was the first member of the Sacerdotal College, since the building of Rome, who was publicly tried and condemned. As to P. Scipio, who died in his Consulship, he neither spoke much, nor often: but he was inferior to no one in the purity of his language, and superior to all in wit and pleasantry. His colleague L. Bestia, who begun his Tribuneship very successfully, (for, by a law which he preferred for the purpose, he procured the recall of Popillius, who had been exiled by the influence of Caius Gracchus) was a man of spirit, and a tolerable Speaker: but he did not finish his Consulship so happily. For, in consequence of the invidious law of Mamilius above-mentioned, C. Galba one of the Priests, and the four Consular gentlemen L. Bestia, C. Cato, Sp. Albinus, and that excellent citizen L. Opimius, who killed Gracchus; of which he was acquitted by the people, though he had constantly sided against them,--were all condemned by their judges, who were of the Gracchan party. Very unlike him in his Tribuneship, and indeed in every other part of his life, was that infamous citizen C. Licinius Nerva; but he was not destitute of Eloquence. Nearly at the same time, (though, indeed, he was somewhat older) flourished C. Fimbria, who was rather rough and abusive, and much too warm and hasty: but his application, and his great integrity and firmness made him a serviceable Speaker in the Senate. He was likewise a tolerable Pleader, and Civilian, and distinguished by the same rigid freedom in the turn of his language, as in that of his virtues. When we were boys, we used to think his Orations worth reading; though they are now scarcely to be met with. But C. Sextius Calvinus was equally elegant both in his taste, and his language, though, unhappily, of a very infirm constitution:--when the pain in his feet intermitted, he did not decline the trouble of pleading, but he did not attempt it very often. His fellow-citizens, therefore, made use of his advice, whenever they had occasion for it; but of his patronage, only when his health permitted. Cotemporary with these, my good friend, was your namesake M. Brutus, the disgrace of your noble family; who, though he bore that honourable name, and had the best of men, and an eminent Civilian, for his father, confined his practice to accusations, as Lycurgus is said to have done at Athens. He never sued for any of our